I question that premise.
I certainly believe in elite-level athleticism, but most elite athletes are strongly deluded about their own skills. It's seemingly of benefit to their practice.
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In my youth I was a very very good runner. The difference between the actual elites and the very good is heartbreakingly large. I could multiple lap good non runners. The world level guy could lap me. Most people never get to a level where they can even understand the gap.
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but spiritual practice is more like acrobatics. There are break points: at certain levels of acrobatic skills you can do discrete actions that lesser acrobats or ordinary people can't even do. You aren't just faster by X seconds, or stronger.
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Thanks you two for having this conversation in open feed, interesting stuff.
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Seems like a good state of affairs! 🙂
It’s also cool to see how people approach this stuff differently - I find it helps me notice blind spots in my own practice/life/behaviour etc.
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Amazing what can come out from spouting off sometimes. Something about a good conversation has tremendous capacity to make new connections in our thinking; clarify points, make the bullshit more visible to ourselves (and others) all that good stuff.
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Of course, I need to pay more attention to the downsides to open discussion though. This is something I’m noticing more recently. I lean so heavily to the side of openness that I’ve become somewhat insensitive to potential risk. Important lesson to be learnt there, I suspect.
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good will on both sides is generally necessary, and there needs to be enough common ground. Sindre and I have both.
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There is also the effect on your public image, at some point.
But I block obnoxious trolls, and I don't have 100000 followers, so I don't see much reason to care about that.